Before my first child, I made a watercolor ABC book and decided that I wanted to do it again before number two was born - with a SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER PAGE COUNT. It was easy for me to decide on colors, because I love them a ton. You know how photographers are “supposed” to wear all black? (Who decided that?) Well that ain’t me. For some insight, I’ve been trying to convince my husband that we absolutely need this extremely colorful duvet set for YEARS. Please leave a comment below if you agree that I need it. Please leave no comment below if you do not.
Anyways.
Color. I just love it so much and I love painting with watercolors and I love road tripping to different beautiful places around the country, particularly national parks, and this board book combines it all.
I printed the book just like I’d print a photo album. This one in particular is through ZNO because it’s on the affordable end and they offer these rigid pages that are crucial if you ever actually want to trust your baby to handle the book themselves. Printing as a photo album is significantly more expensive than a regular ol’ board book you’d find in the infant section at Barnes & Noble, but it was important to me that the image/color quality was just as good as a photo print and in the end - you’re paying for the value of giving your child an experience completely unique to them.
My number one piece of advice for doing any sort of custom book project like this is to truly make it AS CUSTOM AS POSSIBLE. Make the pages about you and your family and use all the tiny details you can to make it unique. My favorite detail about this book is on the very last page, I included all the photographs that the landscapes are from! I’ll show them here in a bit.
I like to think that these pages can be conversation starters in the future. I don’t know about trips that my parents went on before I was born - I don’t know how or why that would come up in conversation. These pictures are just a glimpse into lots and lots of stories from our trips. Such as, but not limited to, running out of dry clothes because we went to the Redwoods during the rainy season but arriving at the laundromat 30 minutes before closing so we put our dirty wet clothes DIRECTLY. INTO. THE. DRYER.
Designing the inside cover pages is truly just a lil treat for myself.
These board books are the perfect size to prop up in front of a baby when they’re doing their daily mandated tummy time.
Here are the full illustrations and photo that goes with each:
So there it is! I’d love to keep making books for my children (and other children? idk) so if you know a more affordable way to make board books than using this photo album route, please share!